Lead with Effectiveness and Manage with Success
Leadership is the ability to cast a vision and draw others to you in a collective pursuit of that vision. The mark of leadership, therefore, is if you have followers. And the mark of great leadership is if you have committed followers.
Conversely, someone with no followers is not a leader.
Early in my life, I’d often hear people say I was a natural born leader. I was never sure why they said this, and their conviction perplexed me.
In retrospect, it was my attitude. I told my peers what to do and expected them to comply. Usually they did.
Many an esteemed leader, I understand, is either a firstborn or an only child. This family dynamic predisposes children to develop leadership capabilities—or at least leadership attitudes.
My leadership characteristics may have resulted from being a firstborn. And since my sister followed me by seven years, I also had most of the characteristics of an only child. In this respect, my birth order predisposed me toward leadership.
In looking over my career and my life, I see times of leadership success but also times of leadership failure. Though every leader experiences times when things don’t go as expected, my shortfalls grated on me. Each one caused me to question my leadership ability.
Most of my leadership successes came in the field of business. My followers were my employees. At the risk of oversimplification, I paid them to follow me.
Yes, some did so with a sold-out commitment to the vision we pursued, while others did so with lesser enthusiasm. I suspect the paycheck—and not my charisma or “natural leadership ability”—was why they followed me.
Outside the business realm, be it in industry organizations or nonprofits, my leadership outcomes produced satisfaction as well as frustration.
Yes, I excelled at leading writing critique groups and Bible studies, but opportunities of a larger scope sometimes provided greater challenges.
In all those cases, there was no employment component, so followers held an interest in a shared vision or desired outcome. And it was my appeal and effectiveness as a leader that either drew them in or caused them to retreat.
Yet, concurrent to this, I also worked at becoming a humble leader, one with less swagger. I knew how to be a cocky leader, but how to lead with humility too often escaped me, even though I knew it was possible.
Parallel to this, I also had management potential. Contrary to my leadership promise, I saw my propensity for management from an early age.
This skill—along with intentional development along the way—resulted in a lifelong string of management successes. At least that’s how I see them.
And for those few years when I wasn’t in management, I chafed at the shortcomings of my superiors. I was sure they were doing it wrong.
Management is the ability to analyze a situation—such as staffing, infrastructure, finances, operations, or customer service—to determine the best course of action to move forward and accomplish the desired outcome.
With a plan in place, managers implement it, all the while adjusting to produce the best results in the shortest amount of time.
Management success requires an analytical mindset, which is a skill I see in myself.
Leadership and management connect. Though sometimes a situation is clearly leadership or clearly management, usually there is no obvious dividing line between the two, with successful leadership giving way to management and successful management tapping into leadership.
They exist on a continuum. In truth, most situations require leaders to also manage and managers to also lead.
Therefore, I’ll treat the two concepts as interchangeable, all the while knowing that not all leaders are managers and not all managers are leaders. Yet, I maintain that the best ones are both.
If you see yourself as a leader but not a manager, or a manager but not a leader, don’t despair. Instead of trying to be what you aren’t, celebrate what you are and align yourself with someone who possesses the skills you lack.
Regardless of your situation or where you see yourself on the leadership-management continuum, this book is for you. Seize its lessons to lead with more effectiveness and manage with greater success, all the while doing so with integrity and excellence.
Read more in Peter Lyle DeHaan’s book Sticky Leadership and Management, featuring his compelling story-driven insights and tips.
Peter Lyle DeHaan is an entrepreneur and businessman who has managed, owned, and started multiple businesses over his career. Common themes at every turn have included customer service, sales and marketing, and leadership and management.
He shares his lifetime of business experience and personal insights through his books to encourage, inspire, and occasionally entertain.